The Link Between Chronic Pain And Buried Emotion

Your back hurts every morning.

Your migraines won't stop.

Your IBS has controlled your life for years.

Doctors say there's no structural cause… but the pain is real.

What if your brain is creating the pain to protect you from something else?

How The Mind Creates Physical Pain

In the 1980s, Dr. John Sarno proposed a radical idea:

Most chronic pain isn't physical—it's psychological.

Your brain restricts oxygen to muscles and nerves just enough to create pain, but not enough to cause damage.

The pain keeps you distracted from buried emotions your unconscious mind considers too dangerous to feel.

Emotions you couldn't process as a child because feeling them was unsafe. So you buried them. But they never disappeared—they just found another way out… through your body.

The Evidence

A 2013 Northwestern University study tracked people with acute back pain for one year using brain scans.

Among those who developed chronic pain, brain activity shifted from the area processing physical sensations to the area processing emotions.

The emotional brain was generating the pain.

A 2007 USC study tested mind-body treatment on chronic pain patients using education, journaling, and psychotherapy.

Average pain reduction: 52%.

Research on Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) now validates this approach.

A 2021 study in JAMA Psychiatry found that half of fibromyalgia patients who processed repressed emotions became pain-free.

Not "pain reduced." Pain-free.

The Solution

Your unconscious mind protects you from feelings it believes will destroy you.

As a child, expressing rage or other intense emotions was unacceptable, so your brain learned to redirect that energy elsewhere—into your body.

This may explain why chronic pain often:

• Moves around your body

• Doesn't correlate with imaging results

• Worsens during stress

• Doesn't respond to physical treatments

• Started after a period of high emotional stress

The solution isn't surgery or medication—it's awareness.

When you understand that symptoms are psychological, and sit with them—you give them an opportunity to disappear.

Awareness breaks the pattern.

Start journaling about buried emotions, resume normal physical activity without fear, and stop treating your body like it's broken.

Nothing is damaged. You're avoiding something your brain thinks you can't handle. But you can.

Until next time,

Kashif Khan

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Information on this site is provided for informational purposes only. It is not meant to substitute for medical advice from your physician or other medical professional. You should not use the information contained herein for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease or prescribing any medication. If you have or suspect that you have a medical problem, promptly contact your regular healthcare provider.